Magnetic Compass Adjuster

It sounds like a simple yes-or-no question, but it hides a trap that catches both officers and ship managers: the word certificate is doing double duty. In the world of magnetic compasses there are two completely different certificates, only one of which is about the person — and confusing them leads people to badly wrong conclusions about what expires, when, and what it costs to keep current. This post separates the two, explains what actually expires in each case, and looks

"Train your own officer and cut external compass-adjustment costs" is a tidy slogan — but a fleet manager rightly wants the arithmetic behind it, not the slogan. So this post does the calculation honestly, including the cases where keeping an external adjuster is still the right call. The aim is a model you can run against your own fleet, not a number we have invented for you. If you have read the earlier posts in this series — on when SOLAS requires a compass to be adjusted

In an earlier post we covered when a ship is legally required to adjust its magnetic compass under SOLAS Chapter V. That raises the obvious next question, and it is one operators get wrong surprisingly often: who is actually allowed to do the adjustment? Can the master simply swing the ship and re-card the compass, or does the law demand a specialist? And if your own officer holds a compass adjuster qualification, does that make them authorised to do it? The answer is more la

Of all the words in SOLAS Chapter V, two do a surprising amount of work: properly adjusted. The convention does not merely require a ship to carry a magnetic compass — it requires a properly adjusted one. That single phrase turns compass adjustment from a piece of good seamanship into a standing legal obligation, and it is the reason a vessel can pass every other check yet still pick up a Port State Control deficiency over a compass nobody has touched in years. This guide set

In the precision-oriented domain of navigation, the concepts of True North and Magnetic North are pivotal, albeit frequently...